C++ and python are a suburb combo, they complement each other really well. If you master both, by that I mean not just the syntax, but the different patterns an

C++ and python are a suburb combo, they complement each other really well. If you master both, by that I mean not just the syntax, but the different patterns and styles you need to employ in static vs dynamic typed, understand the tradeoffs of both, you've pretty much mastered programming. Python also glues v. nicely with C, if a part of your code is v. CPU heavy, you can write it with cython, and then call the compiled code from python, as you would a normal python function, and it would run just as fast as native c. This is how all those python data libraries work under the hood (pandas, sklearn etc) Library catalogue is a great idea for DB learning, you'll learn how to model data, and the relations between them, using tables, foreign keys, primary keys etc. I'd recommend postgres for the DB. Again, python would be an excellent language for this, you can use sqlalchemy to define your tables, and query them. You can then use flask to provide a web interface for the catalogue.